Trade rondeau redux

The turn order pattern can be interesting.

During a City State’s turn all the players with presence in that City State may act, moving and using their product markers as appropriate. This is the micro-economics exercise portion of the programme. Such movements are usually entirely self-interested but they need not be. Players have a limited number of actions they may perform and beyond that limit must pay exponentially for continuing. Any given product market can move at most once for free, with additional movements also raising (slower) exponential costs. The result is that players must optimise a two and a half dimensional field:

1. Limiting the total number of product markers within a City State so as to retain efficiency and flexibility in the face of player competition. The key risk is that every product marker that hasn’t been used or moved by the end of a turn must be discarded (deliberate shades of Neuland). Given that a product market on a late-building may represent actions across a dozen turns, losing such a product marker is expensive.
2. Securing a production line by saturating all the buildings in the production line with product markers. The result is that turns become simple: just bump the whole chain forward one step. Of course if the production chain is longer than the maximum number of free actions, then the costs will need to be balanced. The primary risk is that another player will attempt to pre-empt a later portion of the whole chain, possibly causing a large number of product markers to rot and be lost. The current expectation is that players will attempt this pattern but segmenting their production line across multiple City States. Each City State would contain a smaller number of steps and markers, but the player would need to bear the cost of transport feed for the products between City States.
3. Risk. Production lines will generally represent single technology levels. Too many product markers committed to a single production opens the player to the risk of losing some or all of them due to one of the City States upgrading to a higher technology, causing key buildings and the product markers on them to be lost. It is expected that long production chains will be absurdly profitable. Thus it is in the key interest of all players to push the technology tree quickly so that the players that do secure those long production lines can’t profit from them too heavily and sustain a considerable recovery period when moving to the new technology level (deliberate shades of 18XX: 3 trains cannot be allowed to live for too long).

What makes this interesting is the effect of player and City State turn order on this balance.

On a City State’s turn players first operate in turn order, and then the City State operates. In general the first phase should consist of the players running the micro-economy and the second phase will have the City States gearing up for the next layer/scale of the micro-economy. But not always.

During the player phase players may force the City State to build and do anything they wish just as long as the player also presents all the resources necessary. This has two primary results. First it allows a City State to act (beneficially or not) during the player phase, effectively giving the City State am extra free turn (and multiple players could do this together for multiple extra City State turns) while the players donating that extra turn also increase their investment in the City State, thus possibly becoming the investment leader and thus dictator of the City State’s actions on its turn. Secondly the City State on its turn may purchase goods from players in order to perform City State actions, thus effectively giving money and actions back to the subject player (may be the primary investor/dictator).

ObNote: Players may also purchase products from each other in a limited form auction,

It is hoped that this will create a multilevel market:

1. Players will sacrifice actions and money to gain the buildings etc they want along with influence and control of the City State. The increased investment can change the controller of the City State, the rewards for war (discussed later), and can move the City State higher in the turn order of City States.
2. Primary investors will cause the City States to purchase products from players, thus pushing investment money back out to the players and thus granting them liquidity and flexibility, and reduging the total investment volume of the City State and thus possibly moving it lower in the turn order of City States.